… to you, maybe… But to the American Psychiatric Association, with its eminent leaders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is an absolute goldmine.

… my hubby!  (♥!!)  Fill out these forms and help us get him elected!”

Once UD gets tired of chronicling the depraved big-time sports programs at the University of Tennessee, she can turn to the UT med school in Memphis.

Prohibiting your faculty from using industry representatives to ghostwrite their articles! Now I’ve seen everything! The gall.

…you’ll need to keep tuition very high too.

Thus, at the University of Hawaii, a perennial source of embarrassing stories on this blog (type hawaii in my search engine), tuition has had to double in the last five years in order to keep administration palms greased. In the last eleven years, tuition has increased by 141 percent. Without these increases, the campus cronyism that doles out huge sums to inept friends with construction companies – in the expectation, I guess, that some of that money will come right back to the dolers – would not be able to operate.

“In Alexandria, Va., the rate of antidepressant use is the highest in the country, with a full 40 percent of residents receiving prescriptions.”

Antidepressants and antipsychotics are having a field day in America, and one can only gaze at the above statistic in admiration at the marketing techniques that have gotten pharma this far. Down the street from UD‘s ‘thesda, it won’t be long before fully half of the population has convinced itself it needs to take powerful pills, with powerful side effects, to get through life.

Given the exact same demographics here in ‘thesda (wealthy well-educated DC suburb), can UD’s neighborhood be far behind?

And what have universities to do with this?

Well, there are powerful pharma-sponsored incentives for universities to do quick sloppy work toward generating more and more pills for this amazing growth market. Their research subjects are human beings – often very vulnerable human beings – who need protection from the frightening implications of this situation.

One person who reportedly did not receive those protections was Dan Markingson, who in 2004 committed suicide while enrolled in a University of Minnesota psychiatric drug study. The details of the case are here; a much shorter summary appears as preamble to an online petition asking that a serious inquiry into research ethics at Minnesota be initiated. This seems to me a reasonable idea, and I’ve happily signed the petition.

… there are quite a few Wee Ones.

Wee Ones are teeny weeny provincial pinpricks on the national collegiate map, places run by teeny weeny provincial people all of whom have pretty much exactly the same religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds.

You do not have to be in the literal provinces to be a Wee One; indeed, the biggest Wee One in America (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) is Yeshiva University, located in the dynamic midst of our most dynamic metropolis. Forcing ground of Bernard Madoff and Ezra Merkin, Yeshiva has attained its signature WO mix of academic go-nowhere-ism, financial corruption, and (the true distinguishing mark of the fully-evolved WO) religious self-righteousness, because its all-male, all-buddy board of trustees has difficulty grasping the meaning of the term conflict of interest.

To be sure, some Wee Ones, like President-for-Life Glenn Poshard’s Southern Illinois University, are located (right, check the name) in the provinces. Some WOs lack the moral superiority religious institutions bring to their misdeeds. But all Wee Ones share – now or in the recent past – conflicted boards of trustees; and many, of course, add to this mix a willingly conflicted university president.

If you review this blog’s Conflict of Interest category for the Wee Ones hit parade, you’ll find New York’s St John’s University right at the front of the fun.

Now, provincial typically means convoluted, so you’re going to have to put on your thinking cap to follow all of the insider connections in the latest St John’s (a Catholic school whose president is a priest) scandal. For instance, a certain Wile, chief of staff to President Father Donald Harrington, got a loan from the Chair of the BOT…

Wile used the loan from the former Chair [of the BOT] to help fund a real-estate venture with university president Father Donald Harrington, his boss. Neither loan was disclosed to the board of trustees at the time they were made.

Oh, with Father Harrington! Okay, and you and Harrington and I guess the former Chair decided not to tell the rest of the guys on the board about it. Okay.

Wile went on to be not only Harrington’s chief of staff, but vice-president for institutional development (given his remarkable money smarts, which landed him in a position where he needed massive loans and got them unethically). And… I dunno.. there’s more… but ol’ UD is running out of steam on this one…

UD has told you about this form of campus malfeasance repeatedly. So common are engineering professors who set up their own firms and divert university money that UD has suggested armed guards be posted at their offices as a sort of discouragement to them.

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History here.

Go here for background.

I

UT and CPRIT have different numbers for the amount of money the [state] agency has allocated to the University in grant funds [for cancer research], and neither institution was able to explain the discrepancy.

[A University of Texas spokesperson] said UT has been awarded $29.3 million by CPRIT so far, while the agency’s website states CPRIT has granted $38.4 million to UT since 2010. The page lists individual grants awarded by CPRIT.

CPRIT information specialist Ellen Read said financial employees at the agency do not know why there is a discrepancy, but that they believe the agency granted $37.9 million to UT-Austin, not $38.4 million.

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II

The recipient of the biggest grant given by the state’s cancer-fighting agency had spent $1.3 million — or one-sixth of its taxpayer money — on nonallowable costs such as bonuses, moving expenses and honorariums for board members before it ceased operations, Texas lawmakers were told Wednesday.

The Statewide Clinical Trials Network of Texas, or CTNeT, shut down last week after the state stopped advancing it money.

… Two of the [CPRIT's] top executives, Bill Gimson and Alfred Gilman, who helped approve a $25 million grant to CTNeT, also served on CTNeT’s board.

… CPRIT had advanced the network $8.6 million of its total grant … [N]onallowable costs — cited as $301,000 in [an] audit – [have] grown to $1.3 million.

[M]ost of that increase was to pay CTNeT board members $9,000 apiece each quarter for attending board meetings. …Gimson and Gilman …were drawing $300,000 and $700,000 annual salaries from CPRIT…

… CTNet officials tried to “backdate” the paperwork to justify the honorarium.

Let’s see… Cancer or me? Cancer or me? … Me!

… has certainly boosted its rank with its sordid abuse of the new, incredibly generous, state cancer institute, CPRIT. The good people of Texas agreed to give a lot of tax money to this agency, which promised to improve cancer research and treatment for them.

But as soon as its board got hold of its three billion dollars, they allegedly began gifting themselves huge salaries, tossing huge grants to their friends, and ignoring huge swathes of rules and regulations. As one of UD‘s oldest friends – a grants specialist at a local university – writes to her:

Bottom line: a state agency with a gigantic budget and a mission of curing cancer in our lifetime has run amuck – spending huge sums of money in a manner that appears to be governed by favoritism, fails to hold grantees accountable, and fails to manage actual or perceived conflicts of interest. To me, the most damning aspect is the resignations of high ranking officials – they must know even more than what has been revealed to date, and they appear to be abandoning the sinking ship.

A local journalist writes:

[W]e suspect that Governor Perry has been sluicing cancer research money to his buddies.

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How gross is this?

As gross as it gets.

And most of the state’s major universities have been along for the ride.

– is once again on the receiving end of a spanking delivered by a Jewish newspaper. “Moral bankruptcy… exists at the institution… [Yeshiva] must immediately undertake an independent investigation which examines moral issues at the institution.”

The author reviews some – not all – of the scandals emanating from Yeshiva just over the last few years. He wonders why Yeshiva covers them up, denies them… UD has asked why Yeshiva refuses to respond to angry public letters from alumni, fails to change its incestuous form of governance…

Far from being willing to examine its structural corruption – a corruption will which continue to generate scandals – Yeshiva shows every sign of believing itself to be morally superior.

How long can a large complex organization remain delusional?

UD gives it another five years before it will be put in some form of receivership.

… continue…

Recall this long 2009 New York Magazine article, which notes that

Ezra [Merkin] had served as chairman of Yeshiva [University’s] investment committee since about 1994. Not long after that, the committee directed $14.5 million of Yeshiva’s endowment to Ascot [Merkin's fund], which Ezra passed along to [Bernard] Madoff, collecting his usual fee, initially one percent and later 1.5 percent, standard for all of Yeshiva’s money managers.

Yeshiva saw no conflict of interest or, if it did, didn’t mind. The university required nothing more than that those who served on the investment committee disclose that they were doing business with the university. The 2003 disclosure to the board, a copy of which was obtained by New York Magazine, reported that Ezra was managing about 10 percent of Yeshiva’s endowment through four different funds. For his efforts, he collected over $2 million in fees, almost $1 million for Ascot alone.

That 2003 memo stated that Madoff was Ascot’s “executing broker,” a term that means he was executing buy and sell orders, supposedly those dictated by Ascot. In fact, though Merkin looked at Madoff’s statements every month, and they were detailed and thorough, and questioned him about his accounts, he left the trading—or, as we now know, lack thereof—to Madoff. Some now wonder about the propriety of the chairman of the investment committee’s taking fees for simply passing along money to Bernie—especially since Bernie was elected to Yeshiva’s board of trustees in 1996 … Why not just give the money directly to Bernie and save Yeshiva the fee? To some, it seemed like Ezra was skimming profits, and from an institution he loved.

Whatever fudging there’d been in the disclosures, Ezra did well for Yeshiva—in fourteen years, the fund grew 9 percent a year, even after subtracting losses for Madoff and expenses. And he did well for himself; certainly, he made at least $10 million from Yeshiva over his tenure.

Which is to say that if you are going to have your hedgie trustees (and eventually all your trustees will be hedgies) invest for you – in their funds – you want to be very careful not to do a Yeshiva. Already Brown University has had to let one way big money trustee go, and now there’s the awkward matter of Steven A. Cohen himself on its board. So first of all you need to weigh, er, reputational issues against growing your endowment.

And then there’s Dartmouth’s ongoing problem.

In February 2012, a group sent an anonymous letter to the office of the New Hampshire attorney general. “Who really runs Dartmouth College and for whose benefit?” the letter asked. “For years, Dartmouth has been run by and has paid sky-high fees to a group of investment manager trustees, all Dartmouth graduates, who have then recycled some portion of the fees” back to the college “as generous ‘donations,’ ” often getting a building named for them in the process.

Teehee. They get these huge fees for doing something with the school’s money, and then they graciously give back some of the money the school gave them and call this money a donation.

In his year-end review of bogus research, Gary Marcus notes endemic cheating in scientific studies and lists six ways to fix the problem. Each approach makes sense – do something about publish or perish, establish an ethical code, encourage insiders to police the work in their field…

But for some reason, Marcus omits the biggest problem of all: pharma. The staggering financial incentives for colluding with corporations and their ghost writers make an incentive like tenure look paltry.

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UD thanks Dirk.

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UPDATE: And don’t forget this problem.

When the evidence – often ambiguous and often paid for by drug-makers – allows you to go pretty much anywhere, you’ll go where the money is.

Actually, the evidence about whether people grieving the loss of someone they loved are more susceptible to clinical depression and suicide seems to be… no.

[In] a major national survey, none of the bereaved who now could be subject to a diagnosis of depression had attempted suicide. Other data sets … showed similar results — indeed, such individuals are less likely to attempt suicide than someone in the general population.

Indeed now people who show up for their on-average seven minute visit to their primary doctor and who are overtly sad because someone important to them recently died may be subject to a depression diagnosis and all the anti-depressant pills thereto.

It’s all there in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the big book your doctor thumbs through to treat your grief.

Treat your grief. How’s your grief treatment going? Something new enters the language.